


Paradisaeidae

by nsmorig



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Birds of Paradise as a Plot Point, Cultural Differences, Ecology, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Habitiat Destruction Due To Sauron, M/M, Mirkwood, Mirkwood Can Be A Sub-Tropical Rainforest If You're Not A Coward, Pre-Relationship, ambiguously platonic, fic of a fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 23:44:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18559537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nsmorig/pseuds/nsmorig
Summary: As the Dwarves march their way home to Erebor, Gimli son of Gloin gets stuck in a tree.





	Paradisaeidae

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Words Unspoken](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18464311) by [Roselightfairy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roselightfairy/pseuds/Roselightfairy). 



> this is a fic of a fic (Roselight Fairy's Words Unspoken, which is linked at the bottom,) which this is a precursor/prequel/missing scene(?) to, but I think it can be understood on its own.
> 
> that fic is a much longer look at an established (secret, shh!) relationship, where they met something like this.
> 
> unbeta'd; all mistakes are my own.

Blue lights flickered in the deep shadows of the Mirkwood in Gimli's peripheral vision, and were gone when he turned his head. He hauled himself further up the smooth trunk, hauling his pack behind him, arms trembling with his own weight; it felt that he had been on the branches of this tree for hours, now, and the sun had slunk low and consigned the forest floor to a darker murk. Were these the tunnels of his distant home, he would light a gas-lamp, or, failing that, be able to find a safe place to sleep by the murmuring and magnetism of the stone, but this was a forest, a veritable jungle, and it blurred and shifted about him.

 

It had not been so awful with his mother and his siblings and his cousins with him, as they had been all the way from Ered Luin, but his mother had turned back at the entrance to the forest to seek out some bear-creature that his father's letters had mentioned, and Gimli—what a fool he had been—had said that he would continue on alone, and join another travelling party in the Laketown, and tell his father that they were delayed. And then there had been some event to call away any escort—which he had at first been pleased by, to walk without an elf watching his every move, but now regretted—and then pale lights ahead, as if the lamps of a Dwarven travelling party . . .

 

He was hopelessly lost, he could admit it. His pride was flexible enough for that. But he could not sleep on the ground, for he had heard too much of the perils here, and could see them plain about him. So, against his every instinct, he climbed a tree in search of a quiet place that he might wait out the long night.

 

Or he did, until there came a murmuring of leaves and wind behind him, and he froze.

 

"A dwarf in a tree," said a low, amused voice from behind him. "How curious."

 

Gimli craned his neck to see, and far too close for him to be comfortable stood an elf, his feet steady on a branch that looked as though it would not support a squirrel. His dark hair was pulled back from his face, deep in shadow, in wild braids, and he stood proudly in the colours of the Elven-Kingdom, knives at his side and an arrow held gently in his long fingers. All of him was long, too thin, not quite as limbs should be, and within his grinning mouth his teeth were sharp.

 

This elf, Gimli thought, would do him more damage than the forest could.

 

"I cannot sleep on the ground," he bit out, breathing heavily as he tried to manoeuvre his feet into some position where he had purchase. This was no sensible climbing, with rock beneath his hands and narrow passages to squeeze through and ropes to hang from; this was a tree, and it was not made for him. He turned his back again to the elf, not because he wished to be stabbed but because the tree demanded it. Unexpectedly, there came a pressure on his lower back from a long-fingered hand, and he was able with that small help to haul himself over a side-leaning branch and cling there securely.

 

"You cannot sleep here at all," the elf said, with a tempered, polite anger that was somehow ruder than shouting. "There are spirits, this deep in the woods, and they draw closer to you all the time you are alone. Besides, it is the decree of the King that all the dwarves who pass through the Greenwood to Erebor must be accompanied by a patrol of his militia."

 

Gimli winced, but he could not find it in himself to doubt the elf's words; those strange blue flames that he had followed off the path still seemed to look out at him like eyes, and it was not so strange to think that they had lured him here. "These spirits," he said, "What do they want with me?"

 

"They seek out those that are alone, and they lead them into the dark places and hold them there, until they are convinced they are alone in the world, and die of lack of love; the spirits were once elves, or so we are told, that were lost and never found, and now they seek company, but do not know that they drive it to its doom. They will not have you, now, for I am here, but you narrowly escaped, I think."

 

"I will accompany you back to the borders," the elf continued, stopping not to breathe. "You must come down, we will start out with haste."

 

"I have not slept in several nights," Gimli snapped, and found that he did not mind his own rudeness. "I am mortal, you see, damned creature, and I need to rest, and I have been lost a long time. If you will lead me out, you will do it with the dawn." He raised an eyebrow, almost mocking. "These ghosts have no hold on me now, you say."

 

The elf narrowed his dark eyes, and their long lashes fanned across his high cheekbones. "All intruders in our forest must be accompanied by a patrol," he repeated, "By order of the King, or be shot as trespassers and brought into our jails."

 

"Oh, I know well how your patrols treat trespassers! I have heard much of your hospitality, here. Believe me, if I had a choice, I too would prefer that I were not here."

 

The elf almost snarls, distorting his smooth face, and leaps onto a high branch over Gimli's head. "Sleep here, then, for all your thick-necked stubbornness, but you will not leave this forest alone and alive!"

 

In truth, he had not meant to sleep there with the were-lights all around, but he had never known how to back down from a challenge, and the sneer upon the elf's face was as effective a challenge as any he had seen. He leant back against the trunk, and pulled a blanket from his pack though he was not cold, and feigned comfort just to irritate.

 

The elf did not leave. He must have been waiting, perhaps, for him to doze and then to push him from the tree, but then Gimli would be able to claim the honour, and the elf would know himself in the wrong. Or perhaps—and Gimli stifled a snicker at the though—he himself feared the wisps of spirit, and did not wish to leave and venture past them alone. The elf perched upon the branch that he had claimed like an overbearing bat, and watched the trees with hawkish eyes, and between his eyelashes Gimli looked at him and found him like some strange beast in every way except for his terrible grace. That, he could not compare to any animal he knew, and would not invent one to ascribe it to—but for the dragon, perhaps, in his slinking walk, in the way that he looked over the forest as though all that his eyes touched was his dominion, and Gimli was a trespasser merely by breathing his air.

 

It was true, perhaps, but that did not make it less infuriating.

 

He had expected to stake out his exhaustion on his spite and lie there in false sleep until the dawn, but somehow the welcoming dark stole up on the inside of his eyelids and he sank, though he expected at any minute a knife, into slumber.

 

//

 

The dwarf— the thrice-damned, awful dwarf began to snore, and still Legolas did not leave. He sat in the tree while his patrol wound their merry way back to the city and he cut his ears open upon the saw-blade sound of his own foolishness.

 

The wisps watched still, but did not venture close, for Legolas stood guard, and for all that he might wish he were, the dwarf was not alone.

 

Alas! For he brought all of his misfortunes upon himself. He could not leave and let him be swallowed by the Shadow that was taking all else in the forest, and it was true that the dwarf would need an escort come the dawn, for his father would not wish his presence in the Greenwood any longer than was necessary, and unattended who knew what damage a dwarf might do to the winding rivers and green shoots of young flowers?

 

So Legolas waited until the sky grew pale grey on the far horizon, and at some time in the night came to stand at the feet of the sleeping dwarf—the better to stop him tumbling and breaking a new-growing fern, of course.

 

Wise he was after all, because although the wisps kept a distance for respect for him, there came in the early hours of the morning a chitinous noise from the West. Dark eyes gleamed from a bough in the distance, and before he could think he was upon his feet and drawing an arrow. It flew straight, but his motion had disturbed the sleeping intruder, who thrashed and shouted with no thought to what that might call from the deep shadows. No, he leapt to his feet beside Legolas, and drew what looked like a logging axe. He threw his head about, searching, and was able to follow the flight of another arrow to the spiders.

 

Calling out something hoarse in his guttural language, the dwarf leapt forwards with his barbaric weapon in hand and came to his own defence. He crashed through the branches with an unexpected if brutal grace, and landed solidly upon a carapace while Legolas fired.

 

They came thick and fast, in numbers that he had never faced alone—but he did not face them alone, and the axe-blade brought many down that arrows could not have reached. The noise of it was surprisingly little, with the single-minded focus that came upon them both, as Legolas put aside his bow and was forced to draw his knives.

 

He swung onto the lower branch, joining the dwarf, and it was surpassingly strange, to fight beside him. But well he fought, technically sharp and dancing with his feet, luring them in with wide swings such that Legolas could catch spindly spider-legs unawares and catching those that Legolas passed onto him.

 

Silver silk hung over the branches here, but soon so did the translucent blood of the spiders and their strangely-coloured insect viscera. The dwarf stood still at last, his axe hanging fallow, and in the sudden peace they only breathed and looked at each other.

 

"You were there all night," the dwarf said. There was no question in it, just a weary confusion, and Legolas nodded, for he had no explanation."You have probably saved my life, then," he continued, as if resigned to the uncomfortable truth of it.

 

A bird awoke in the canopy, and sung softly. The distant river skipped over its bed at the bottom of its ravine.

 

The dwarf bowed, then, hand upon his chest, with something of ritual about him. The red cloud of his curling hair, stirred into wildness by the battle, floated about his wide face. "Gimli, son of Gloin," he said; "I am at your service, apparently, for all that I might wish otherwise."

 

Legolas opened his mouth, and closed it again. There seemed to be nothing that he could say. The dwarf's shining eyes widened, then, suddenly, and with the single-minded focus that often came to him in moments of adrenaline Legolas watched his pupil shrink as he darted past. That weapon that he had thought was so barbaric was also undoubtedly efficient, and it cracked the carapace of the spider behind him with almost no struggle at all. It fell, shrieking, to the undergrowth, and Legolas realised that he felt the movement of air behind him a fraction of a second before the dwarf—Gimli—moved.

 

"Well," he said, as it crashed through the thin branches and thrashed its last. He searched for words again, and then could only laugh, bright and joyful.

 

Gimli squinted at him as though he had done something truly incomprehensible, and perhaps he had.

 

"Legolas," he said, still brimming with amusement, and imitated the dwarf's earlier formal bow. "And now it seems that I am also at your service, so we are equal."

 

Slowly, almost involuntarily, Gimli smiled. They were both still spattered and stained with the gore of the Shadow, but somehow it didn't matter; Legolas dissolved into what he would insist were not giggles, and the dwarf joined him shortly in low and gasping laughs, bright-eyed.

 

Then, as if to scold them for their levity, the branch below them that Gimli had leaped so gracefully onto began to creak. In a pile of limbs and blades and a forgotten blanket they crashed through the canopy like the spider before them.

 

"I shall be magnanimous, and grant you another hour of sleep, if you wish it," Legolas said tentatively after a moment staring up at the sky, and the answering laugh was pained but not mocking.

 

//

 

When Gimli woke, the sun was far above the horizon and Legolas was no-where to be seen, which was strange, because he had slept with the sort of deepness that came to him rarely when he was not under guard. He sighed, rolling his eyes as he rubbed the sand from them, and wondered absently if he had dreamt the whole debacle up—Legolas, honestly, what sort of a name was that? That's two Westron words and a vowel, not a name—but when he stretched the bruising across his shoulders told him otherwise, and the broken branches were clear as day.

 

He shook off his strange and sourceless disappointment, hauling his back behind him and scrabbling with little skill down to the undergrowth. The thick ferns and tangles of thorns tore at his trousers and tunic, and underneath the layer of fallen wood the ground was carpeted in decay; pale mushrooms, toxic-looking, bloomed from dead leaves that hadn't been shifted by the spring, and as he tried to clear a path he could swear that clouds of spores rose where he set his feet. It was humid, here, cloying and thick, and though there were bright bird-calls issuing from the trees they were too far above to be distinct, and no birds were visible.

 

He had not lied—it was not the sort of place that he would choose to be, even in the daylight, even knowing that he could fight back at least some of the perils here.

 

There were no blue candles. Something held them at bay, perhaps, or perhaps they melted in the sun like thin ice.

 

"Keep your steps quiet!"

 

Gimli threw his head back, and sure enough there was Legolas above him, balanced precariously in the fork of a sapling-thin tree. His gaze was fixed on the canopy, but he tore away his attention for long enough to beam down at Gimli. "Come look," he said, and his voice was quiet and joyful as the bird-calls.

 

He looked, as he was commanded, and though he searched the landscape he could not see what drew the elf's attention so surely until he slid soundlessly from his perch. Legolas knelt beside him, bringing them to a common height, and with his head close beside Gimli's he pointed to a tall, thin, branchless white tree. Up his eyes went, along the ruler-straight trunk, to the narrow crown of leaves that glowed in the sun above the canopy, and the thatch of twigs and debris upon one thin branch. "A nest?"

 

"You do not have sharp eyes, perhaps," Legolas murmured, "But wait a moment. You will not regret it."

 

Sure enough, he did not, for soon there came a strange song, rising and falling, sounding almost too strange to come from a bird. A bird, however, returned to its nest with a stick clutched in its pounces—one of colour so bright that it did not seem real. It looked like some dream, painted upon the white sky, in shades of red and orange like a bird made from fire. Its long tail danced and bobbed as it moved, tiered like flowing fabric, and its wide wings flared and settled. It seemed some sort of phoenix, but real, like the Imperishable Flame had built itself a nest.

 

"He is building his wife a home," Legolas said, voice giddy with joy. "We have not had a breeding pair this far East in many long years."

 

"There are more?" Gimli asked. He realised that he had been staring for so long that his neck ached.

 

"There were once many, and perhaps in a season there will be chicks here again. They develop such marvellous plumage to find a mate, you see, and when there are many predators they do not do so well, because they are so visible. Once, there were few predators here, and so we had birds in all colours, like a set of oil paints, but the Shadow on the forest has driven them away." His voice grows sober, as if in grief. "Away, or into extinction entirely. It was a boon indeed to find this one."

 

"Extinction?"

 

"All of the type can die, sometimes, and then they are never again upon the earth, unless some survive in Valinor. I am told that some like this live there, and so at least they are preserved somewhere—but I would rather have them here, when I can admire them."

 

"I did not know that that could happen to a beast," said Gimli, "And I had not expected it here, of all places."

 

"Neither would I, if I had not seen it, but in recent years things here have grown . . . I should not discuss it with you."

 

"Is the situation so bad as that?"

 

Legolas turned his eyes on him, and there was a deep sadness in him, like something out of Gimli's comprehension. "This is my home," he said at last. "I should not mourn it if I did not need to. But I do."

 

Gimli found himself equally in dark thoughts. "We were told that you prospered."

 

"At the height of Erebor's splendour, perhaps. But now? No. We are near enough under siege. Why, Master Dwarf, did you think we turned out refugees for our own amusement?"

 

Gimli said nothing, and Legolas laughed without mirth. "I see," he said, standing up. His face was in the shadow of storm-cloud. "No, we are not monsters."

 

"I had thought such," said Gimli, throat rasping, "But what one thinks an hour ago and what one thinks now can be quite different."

 

The elf stopped, facing away, and sighed. "I will not fight with you now," he said. "But I do not like you accusing my kingdom of such. If we are to make good time, you must travel faster."

 

The change in subject was sudden, but not unexpected, and Gimli merely shouldered his pack higher and moved onwards, watching the fire-bird for as long as he could. The thorns of the undergrowth tore at his trousers still.

 

//

 

The low-growing plants of the forest floor barely reached Legolas' shins, and it was simple for him to step between them, but as Gimli crashed through them he was far deeper in them, and not able to raise his feet above the catching thorns.

 

"You are not ungraceful after all," he wondered aloud, and regretted it immediately when Gimli turned his furious eyes on him. "I mean that— you are merely at a disadvantage," he finished lamely.

 

"I am not ungraceful, no," Gimli said, voice steady with steel. "I am a fine warrior, and I dance with skill, and upon an abseiling-rope or a mountainside I would put money that I am faster than you. But this forest seeks to draw blood from me. There was a reason that I went among the branches. I may not alight upon them like a bird, or like you, but I can climb something fair, given the chance, and when I am not exhausted."

 

Legolas turned his face aside in what was becoming an unwelcome habit. "Then we may take the high paths," he said, and knew it was a poor peace offering. "If we climb high, it is—" he carefully did not say 'easy'—"Simpler, to travel, with the wide branches. And you were right. It is safer than the ground."

 

Gimli nodded, and so as an apology for his rudeness Legolas taught him how to find handholds on the trunks of the tall emergents. They did not laugh, as they had before, but Gimli shaded his eyes with his hand when they reached the canopy and beamed out at the forest, and that, he thought, produced much the same giddy feeling as the laughter had.

 

"There is beauty here," he said, and though he braced for Gimli to argue the point no disagreement came. "It is sometimes hard to see, for the Shadow slinks over the ground and even a pure forest can be hostile in its wildness, but it is there."

 

Gimli only smiled, the skin around his eyes creasing. He had, Legolas noted absently, a very sincere face; it showed what he felt, he thought, though he could not confirm that. It was nice, perhaps, to not have to guess at a person's emotions.

 

"We should not intentionally misunderstand each other," Gimli said slowly, measuring his words, concentrating on the jump between two boughs. This high, as the sun rose above the valley, his red hair seemed to glow where it was struck by the light.

 

Legolas blinked. "I'm not sure I catch your meaning," he said, searching for what new insult he might have accidentally made—

 

"I mean that we should take each other in good faith," Gimli continued, thoughtful. "We are, I think, tangling each other up in expectations of each other, and missing what is actually said. I shall presume no rudeness meant if you will do the same."

 

They both stopped, then, to watch a predator stalk its prey far below, and it was some time before Legolas spoke. "I thank you for you understanding," he said, "For I find myself stumbling into insults that I do not mean to make, and I would not have you as my enemy, even if we may not be friends."

 

Might they not? He dared not voice the thought, but as Gimli paused to marvel at an orchid, blooming above the earth with its roots tangling in the air, he found it demanding his attention regardless. Could they not be friends, some day? It was not unknown, after all, for friends to clash as they had, and then find common ground again, as they had. And it was not so strange, that Gimli might think such things of the Mirkwood—he had, often, thought something similar, but somehow it sounded worse from a dwarf, and that did not seem quite fair.

 

But there had been no friendship between the Elves and the Dwarves in a millennium, said a voice from the back of his mind that spoke like his father, and if there ever would be again it would not first be between a Prince of the Greenwood and a dwarf of Erebor.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this nice birdie is not an actual bird, but rather a sort of red version of a black sicklebill, _Epimachus fastuosus_ , of the genus Paradisaeidae. hence the title of the fic, because titles are hard.
> 
> the one thing that I regret about this fic is not including a metaphor about emergent trees, but it wouldn't fit, alas.


End file.
